Two Roads Diverged
by Karone
Summary: A month after returning to the future with his family, Phil makes a startling discovery that changes everything and could lead him back to where he truly belongs (Pheely)
1. One

**Two Roads Diverged  
****By: Karone**

**Chapter One**

A hundred years.

It was strange to think that a tree could live several centuries.

That it could stand through so many generations and so many lifetimes, strong and vibrant.

While the world around it changed, the tree remained as it always was, growing a little taller, a little older, with each passing season and each year that fell away.

It was hard to believe that he'd once stood at this very tree, a hundred years ago.

But the memory of many a warm summer afternoon spent stretched out in the shade beneath its lush green canopy was as vivid as if it had been just yesterday, and he could almost smell the popcorn from the park vendor stands in the air, could almost hear the sounds of familiar laughter as a frisbee whizzed by overhead.

Sighing, Phil Diffy let his fingers drop from the bark of the tree, looking away from the initials carved there.

If he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could picture her standing there in front of him, smiling that warm, tender little smile that was reserved solely for him, her eyes twinkling brightly.

He didn't do it, though, and resisted the temptation to try.

Imagining she was there was the road to madness, as he'd learned all too well as of late, and he refused to take that road today.

Not when he'd already taken it so many times before.

It had been a month since his family had returned to the future, since he'd had to say goodbye.

Four weeks. Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. Forty-three thousand and two hundred minutes. Two million, five hundred ninety-nine thousand seconds.

And counting.

His family had already resettled into their old lives, picking up where they left off, minus the six years they lost while they were stuck in the past, but Phil couldn't seem to do the same. Old friends felt like strangers now, and he wasn't sure whether he hardly knew them or they hardly knew him.

Even hobbies that had once been thrilling, like hoverboarding, didn't interest him anymore.

He would have given anything for a regular old skateboard and a set of knee pads.

Most of all, though, he would have given anything for _her_.

When his family had first gotten stuck in the twenty-first century, Phil had been miserable. All of his friends, his hologames, his whole life and everything he'd ever known had been a hundred years in the future, out of touch and out of reach.

Then he'd met Keely Teslow.

Blond, beautiful, popular and dizzy, she had been so far out of his class it wasn't even funny.

But she'd turned to him for help with algebra, albeit secretly, meeting out of sight from the rest of the popular kids and ducking under the table when her friends happened by so that they wouldn't see her with a 'math geek'. Still, she'd come around and after getting a B on her math test, she'd surprised both him and her friends by sitting with him at lunch.

It had been the start of a beautiful friendship.

And, eventually, that friendship had begun to turn into something more.

He hadn't realized it at first, and he suspected that Keely hadn't either. The two of them had been oblivious to the true nature of their own relationship, even while those closest to them had suspected more.

They'd gone to prom together, both junior and senior, as best friends.

Junior year Phil had come through for her at the last minute, after Keely's original date failed to show, and he'd spent the whole night making her laugh so she would forget about the fact that she'd been stood up by a jerk who hadn't deserved her in the first place.

That had been the first night that he realized how deeply attracted he was to her.

But it hadn't been until senior prom, a year later, that he'd actually done something about it and kissed her.

To his surprise, and maybe to her own, Keely had kissed him back, without hesitation, and the two of them had, from that moment on, been a couple in one form or another.

Graduation night, she'd told him that she loved him.

They'd gone to college together, enrolling at the local university and living in the same dorm building, on the same floor. Keely had roomed with Tia, of course, and Phil had shared a dorm room with Seth, so the four of them had been able to hang out on a daily basis, although Fridays had been exclusively reserved for just him and Keely.

Keely had been majoring in fashion design, and he'd gone into physics, breezing through his classes and earning an internship at a blossoming computer tech company.

With their third year of college coming to a close, they'd been talking about getting an apartment together.

They'd been talking about a lot of things, actually, like what they were going to do once they got out of college... about marriage and, someday, children.

For the first time since getting stuck in the past, the future hadn't meant the twenty-second century.

It had meant a life with Keely, a family of his own, all the things that he'd never really given much thought to at the age of fifteen, or at the age of eighteen to be truthful.

And then his father had said the words that ruined it all.

After six long years of living a hundred years in the past, the time machine was fixed and they were going home.

And just like that, Phil's world had come crashing down.

It had been the hardest thing he'd ever done to leave, and he suspected it had been the hardest thing Keely had ever done to let him.

She hadn't come to see him off, they'd said their goodbyes the night before.

In the hours after she fell asleep in his arms, Phil had lain awake in the dark of her room, watching her sleep. His father had informed him that they were leaving at sunrise, and so he had waited until the very last possible moment to slip out of her bed and get dressed.

He'd stood over her for a long moment, just staring down at her, heart ready to burst it hurt so bad.

The watch on his wrist had blinked twice, alerting him that his family was waiting on him, and he'd bent over to kiss her forehead, whispered with tears in his eyes that he would always love her, no matter how much time passed, matter how many centuries kept them apart.

Then he'd turned and hurried from the apartment she shared with Tia, without looking back.

Because he'd known then what he knew now, that if he'd hesitated just a moment, if he'd so much as glanced over his shoulder for one last glimpse of her, he would never have had the strength to leave.

Now, though, a month later and a hundred years away from the girl he loved, Phil Diffy decided it hadn't been strength, at all, that let him walk away that day.

It had been sheer and utter stupidity.

Turning away from the tree, their tree as marked by the initials encased in a heart that Keely had carved into the trunk one blissful summer day during a picnic for two in their freshmen year of college, Phil shook his head sharply and made himself start walking.

What was done, was done.

He'd made the decision to return to the twenty-second century with his family, and he would have to live with it.

But as he left the park, so different from the park of a hundred years ago and yet strikingly similar just the same, he couldn't help recalling the words his beaming father had spoken upon arriving back in their own time.

_We're home._

Maybe that was true for the rest of the Diffys, but not him.

Keely was home for him.

And home was out of reach now, lost to the sands of time.


	2. Two

**Two Roads Diverged  
****by Karone**

**Chapter Two**

Pickford was a different place these days.

Or had the Pickford of the twenty-first century been the oddity?

Back when their time machine had stranded them in the past, the entire Diffy family had been uneasy with the idea of living in that strange primitive civilization indefinitely.

Buildings made of steel and wood, cars with wheels, airplanes and telephones.

It had all seemed so archaic to a family that came from a world of hovercraft and teleportation booths, like they'd been transplanted into one of the holoexhibits at the Museum of Human History.

Now, Phil found himself longing to take a drive in the Mustang convertible he'd had to leave behind.

Warm summer days like this one had been made for slow, pleasant drives through the countryside with the top down, the wind ruffling his hair and his arm around Keely as she sang along to the radio, her golden hair streaming out behind her in the wind.

_I hope you're having fun driving it, Keel,_ he thought wistfully.

Like most of his twenty-first century possessions, Phil had left his car to her when the time came to return to his own century. It wasn't like he could bring the car back with him, and she had always loved to drive the convertible.

This way at least one of them got to enjoy it.

Sighing, Phil pressed his hand against the touchpad, and, after the scanner identified him, the front door to the Diffy's skyhome slid open.

He stepped inside, and the door closed behind him, sealing itself shut once more.

It was funny, but the home he'd grown up in no longer seemed like home. He missed the simple two-story house of the twenty-first century, the one that his family had lived in for six years. Even after he'd moved into the dorms on campus, it had been nice to go back for a visit with his parents, to be back in that familiar, comfortable place.

Phil had always imagined that he and Keely would one day have a house just like it.

Trudging through the skyhome, Phil noted absently that there didn't seem to be anyone around on the first level. That wasn't entirely unexpected, though, his parents would still be at work, settling back into their old jobs.

He was about to take the turbolift to the next level when he heard noise from the data room.

Taking a few steps in the direction of the room, Phil glanced through the open doorway and wasn't surprised to find that it was his sister, seated at the data terminal and hammering away at the keypad intently. It was reminiscent of an afternoon back in the past, where she'd gotten hooked on the primitive information highway called the 'internet' and was always glued to the computer.

Phil smiled faintly despite himself.

Then he turned away and started for the turbolift shaft.

"Phil?"

The key strokes had come to a halt, and at the sound of Pim's voice, Phil sighed, then backpedaled his way to the open doorway and forced a smile for her sake.

"Where were you?" Pim demanded, sounding irritatingly like their mother.

"Out for a walk," Phil replied flatly. "What's it to you?"

Pim rolled her eyes, an exasperated sigh escaping her lips. "Like I care."

In the six years they'd spent in the past, his little sister had grown up. She was nineteen now, and taller than he'd expected her to be, although he still dwarfed her by several inches. While Pim had lost none of her attitude during that time, she'd softened in a way that was hard to really define, except to say that it was there.

And she'd definitely picked up some twenty-first century lingo that probably amused her friends.

"What are you doing?" Phil asked uninterestedly, just to be amicable.

"Nothing," Pim said quickly.

Too quickly.

Phil raised an eyebrow and his sister bit her lip nervously, eyes flickering back to the data terminal screen anxiously as her fingers twitched toward the keypad.

Curiosity now thoroughly peaked, Phil strode into the room.

Pim tried to close whatever she was looking at, but she wasn't quick enough, and Phil pushed her arm away, peering at the screen despite her protested and attempts to shove him away from the data terminal.

"Don't!" she cried, almost desperately. "That's private!"

"Pim," Phil grunted, shouldering her hand off of him. "What is so..."

He trailed off as he got a good look at the screen, and Pim instantly stilled, her breath catching in her throat.

For a long moment, Phil stared at what was displayed on the screen in front of him, and then he sighed wearily. "Pim," he murmured, running a hand through his hair. "You know better."

"I know," Pim muttered.

"Then why are you doing this?" he inquired.

"Because I had to know," Pim responded sharply, back in attack mode. "I had to know, okay? Is that so wrong!"

"Yes," Phil replied softly.

When he'd come home to find his little sister searching the data terminal, he'd assumed that she was doing some work for school, or that she was playing some new hologame.

Never in a million years had he expected her to be researching Pickford.

Or rather, the lives of one Debbie Berwick and one Bradley Benjamin Farmer specifically.

Phil closed his eyes, trying not to think about where Pim's friends were, and the fact that they were only blocks away from Keely, both attending the same college.

During their early years in the past, Pim had barely tolerated Debbie most of the time, and she and Bradley had fought like cats and dogs, but over time the three of them had become a tight-knit trio. Pim had even shared a dorm with Debbie her first, and only, year at Pickford University.

It couldn't have been easy for Pim to leave, either, he realized.

He wasn't the only one with ties that had been severed.

"Why?" Pim demanded indignantly. "Why is it so wrong to want to know how my friends lives turned out, huh?"

"Because, Pim," Phil said wearily. "You think that you're just going to take a peek, that a little bit of information will be enough. But it won't. It's just going to drive you crazy, and you'll be obsessed with finding every detail you can about their lives, no matter how insignificant."

"And wondering my whole life is better how?"

"It's better than going crazy over things that happened a hundred years ago," Phil answered shortly. "Things that you have no control over, that you can't change."

"Ignorance is bliss, is that it?" Pim asked sarcastically.

"Something like that, yeah," Phil retorted, ignoring her tone.

Pim opened her mouth to make a nasty remark, then paused, a sly gleam lighting her eyes that told Phil she was about to pull out the heavy artillery. "You know," she said thoughtfully, with feigned innocence. "We could always look up Keely..."

Phil drew a sharp breath, his heart wrenching in his chest.

He did know, that was precisely the problem.

From the very instant he realized what Pim was up to, he'd been painfully aware of how easy it would be to find out what had become of Keely. All it would take was a few key strokes, and he'd have her whole life story in front of him.

But it wasn't right, and more importantly, his heart couldn't take it.

What if she'd found someone else?

After all, it might have only been a month to him, but it had been a hundred years in Keely's lifetime. A hundred and fifteen years, to be exact.

And a hundred and fifteen years was a long time.

Keely would be dead by now, he knew that, though he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on it much. Humans had a longer lifespan now than they had in the twenty-first century, the average man lived to be a little over one hundred, but even by twenty-second century standards, there was no possibility of Keely still being alive.

People didn't live to be one hundred and thirty-six, no matter how special they were.

But here was the chance to find out when she'd died, and how.

To know if she'd finished school and gone into fashion design, or if she'd followed her true dream and become a singer. To learn if she'd stayed in Pickford, or gone out into the world to create a new life after the one she'd wanted to build with him had turned to ashes.

If she'd ever, in all those decades, found someone to replace him.

It was temptation at its finest.

And Pim, the little devil that she was, had know it.

"No," Phil managed to say at last, his voice surprisingly steady considering that his heart was in his throat. "We can't."

For a long moment, Pim glared at him, and it was hard to tell if she was more angry or incredulous. She hadn't expected him to say no, that much was obvious. "You're pathetic," she accused, shaking her head in disgust. "Keely's better off without you."

And with that that she turned and stormed out of the data room, muttering under her breath about Pickford and something about how six years in the past hadn't made him any smarter.

Phil stared after her with a frown, not sure what she was on about, then shrugged and turned to shut down the data terminal.

His hand hovered over the keypad, though.

Just a quick peek couldn't hurt, right?

He would just check to see when she'd died, to find out if she'd at least had a long life, then he would walk away and never visit this path again.

Before he could change his mind or talk himself out of it, and before Pim could come back into the room and catch him in the act, Phil selected a new search entry and typed in Keely's name and birthdate, hoping there wouldn't be too many Keely Teslows in the database.

There weren't.

In fact, there were less than a hundred, and he easily found the one he was looking for.

_Keely Anne Teslow  
__Born: 8/12/1990  
__Birthplace: Pickford  
__Date of Death: 4/21/2088_

2088.

She'd lived to be just shy of a hundred years old.

It was strange to know that Keely had died, an old woman of ninety-eight, a good twenty-eight years before he had even been born.

Phil tried not to think about it, about the inescapable reality that fate had never meant for them to be together.

_At least she had a long life,_ he thought, his heart aching.

He hoped it had been a good one.

His eyes stung with tears and he blinked, scrolling down the data entry. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, he just wanted to get away from those words: date of death.

And then something caught his eye.

_Survived by a son, Phillip James Teslow._

Phil stared at the screen in shock, unable to comprehend what it said.

He blinked once, then twice, but the words did not change and something sharp had lodged itself in his chest.

After a moment, his fingers flew across the keypad, moving on their own, and a new entry flickered across the screen, this time for Keely's son.

As soon as he saw the birthdate, Phil knew.

On May 20, 2011, he'd said goodbye to Keely and the twenty-first century.

Nine months later, Keely's son had been born.


	3. Three

**Two Roads Diverged**

**by Karone**

**Chapter Three**

It was strange being back.

Everything that had once been familiar seemed out of place now.

Their first day back, the sound of the holochime had given her a fright, and the sound of hovercrafts roaring past overhead still caused her to flinch when they flew too low.

Life in the twenty-second century was not what she'd remembered it to be.

Had the world always been this loud, this bustling?

Had it always been so automated?

She'd lived her whole life, with the exception of six years after a time machine accident, in this place, yet it felt so foreign now.

Maybe she'd just gotten used to the simple ways of the past.

Even grocery shopping was an entirely alien experience here in the twenty-second century. Gone were the little metal carts that she'd pushed around the store as she strolled up and down each aisle in search of what she needed.

A few touches on a holographic screen now, and everything was teleported right to her.

It was supposed to be convenient.

Barbara Diffy rather thought it callous and mechanical.

How had she never noticed until now that she could go an entire day out in the city running errands, and not speak to a single other human being even once?

She missed that young cashier from the store who used to smile at her every time she came in.

But that was a long time ago.

Over a century in the past, to be exact.

That young cashier was dead by now, like everyone else she remembered.

And the Pickford that she carried so fondly in her heart was gone now, as well, paved over and replaced with this society of advanced technology.

Sighing, Barbara shook her head.

There was no point in dwelling on the past, this was her life now and she had to make the best of it.

Pressing her hand to the touchpad on the wall, Barbara stepped into the glistening skyhome that she'd once been so delighted to own, which now felt like some sterilized prison. It lacked the warmth and comfort of the house they'd lived in back in the twenty-first century, this skyhome felt like a vacation house, a place to visit that was never quite your own.

"Pim?" she called. "Phil?"

Lloyd would still be at work, and probably would be there all night.

It was taking time for him to relearn his old job again, after being away from it for six years.

The skyhome was silent, which was odd, because she had passed one of the hovers outside. At least one of the kids should have been home.

Crossing the hall to the turbolift, Barbara took the lift up to the next floor.

"Kids?" she called, glancing around. "Anybody home?"

The lights were off, but she thought she heard a muffled noise coming from Phil's room, so she headed to his door and knocked lightly.

"Phil?"

There was no answer.

Frowning, Barbara pushed the touchpad, and his door slid open.

It was dark inside, but she could dimly make out a figure laying sprawled on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Phil?" Barbara asked worriedly. "What's wrong?"

He made a noise that sounded somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and she hurried to his side, lowering herself to sit on the edge of the bed beside him. Up close, she could see that he had been crying, and her heart ached for her eldest child.

They had all been forced to leave things behind, but none of them had suffered like Phil.

It was easier to leave friends and shopping carts and houses than it was to leave behind the woman you loved, after all.

"Oh, Phil," she said softly, and reached over to touch his hand.

He flinched, and she looked down to see that his knuckles were raw and scraped.

As if he'd punched the wall.

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Barbara blinked back the tears stinging in her eyes. She hated seeing her son like this, hated that he was hurting so terribly and there was nothing she could do to make it better. Everyone kept telling her that he just needed time, that every broken heart mended eventually, but somehow she knew that it wasn't true.

Her family and friends meant well, but they didn't know Phil like she did.

They didn't know Keely Teslow.

If they could have seen how Keely's laughter lit up Phil's eyes, how he'd smiled for days on end simply because he was in love and happy and content, they would have understood that Phil was not going to get over this anytime soon.

In her heart, Barbara feared he never would.

They'd been back for a month, and Phil wasn't really there.

He was always off in his own world, in a world where Keely existed, lost in the life that time had stolen away from him.

It broke a mother's heart to see him like that.

Taking a shaky breath, Barbara clasped her son's hand in hers, careful not to put pressure on his injured knuckles. "I know this hard for you," she said softly, and found tears starting to slip past her eyelashes despite her efforts to keep them at bay. "I know that you miss Keely and that it's killing you to be away from her..."

Phil squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could block it all out.

"I wish I could bring her back to you, sweetheart," Barbara told him. "I really do."

When she looked at her son now, her grown-up son, it was hard to believe that it had only been six years since their time machine broke.

It felt like it had been a lifetime.

And in a lot of ways, it really had been.

Pim had grown from a bossy little tomboy into a bossy young woman, buffering off some of the harsh edges along the way as she left childhood behind.

It had been Phil who changed the most, though.

Her eldest child had been a touch on the shy side when they first landed in the Pickford of the twenty-first century, uncertain about his place in the world and going through that awkward phase boys wrestled with.

In Pickford, Phil had grown into a man, and he'd built a life for himself.

He'd breezed through his three years of college with grades to make any parent proud, landed an impressive internship that would have led to a cushy job in the computer industry, and found a good woman to make him happy and keep him in line.

What more could a mother want for her son?

But now all of that had been taken away from him, his whole world was gone.

He was broken, and his mother didn't know how to fix him.

Forcing a smile, Barbara leaned over and pressed a kiss to Phil's forehead, brushing hair away from his eyes affectionately. "I love you, sweetheart."

She rose from the bed and was halfway across the room when Phil spoke.

"I have a son."

The statement was spoken in a hoarse, hushed voice, so faint that she almost thought she'd misheard him, but when Barbara turned she knew from the torment on his face that she'd heard right.

"A son?" she echoed flatly.

Phil nodded, pushing himself up to sit against his headboard.

Numbly, Barbara came back to the bed and sat down slowly, staring at him as her brain tried to process that.

"Pim was looking up Debbie and Bradley on the data terminal," Phil explained dully, looking down at his hands as if they could give him some sort of answer. "I... I looked up Keely. I just wanted to... I needed to know that she'd been okay, you know?"

"That's understandable," Barbara said gently.

"And she has a son- _had_ a son," Phil continued in a choked voice. "He was born nine months after we left, and she named him Philip."

Barbara closed her eyes, her heart sinking in her chest.

She didn't need Phil to fill in the blanks, she could put the pieces together just fine on her own.

Phil and Keely had been intimate, she'd never really doubted that, but here was the proof if she'd ever wanted it. That day they left the twenty-first century, a month and a hundred years ago, Keely had been pregnant.

The poor girl had been all alone when she found out.

_Oh, Keely,_ Barbara thought sadly.

"I left her all alone, Mom," Phil rasped, and now he was crying, unable to keep it at bay. "I left them both."

"You didn't know, sweetheart," Barbara told him, wrapping her arms around her son and pressing a kiss to his hair as her own tears slid down her cheeks. "There was no way you could have known."

"She must have hated me," Phil groaned. "Both of them."

"No," Barbara soothed, shaking her head. "No, Phil, Keely could never hate you, you know that. And she would have made sure her son, your son, knew how much you loved them."

Your son.

The words seemed so bizarre, it was unreal.

She was a grandmother.

Or she had been, or would have been or whatever, it was all so confusing.

Her grandson, if he was still alive, was older than she was!

"I wasn't there for him," Phil croaked. "Keely had my son, and I wasn't there for her when he was born, I wasn't there to teach him to play baseball or to help him with his homework or anything of the things that dads are supposed to do."

What could she possibly say to that, to make him feel better?

Phil was right, he hadn't been there, and even though it wasn't by choice, he'd missed out on his son's entire life.

"He's an old man," Phil said hoarsely, more to himself than to her. "He's old and dying, and I never even knew he existed."

"He's alive?" Barbara asked softly. "You looked him up, too?"

Her son closed his eyes, and a soft sob escaped his lips as he nodded.

"Then you should go see him," Barbara told him. "You don't have to talk to him or tell him anything, just go see him. If he's dying, then this is your only chance to ever look at your son, Phil."

"I can't," he rasped.

"You have to," Barbara whispered, forcing a smile through her tears. "So you can see for yourself that the love you and Keely shared didn't die when we left, Phil."

"I don't even know where to find him," Phil protested dully.

"I'll help you," Barbara promised, leaning her forehead against his. "And if you want, I'll go with you to see him."

"Thank you," Phil murmured.

Barbara hugged him, kissing his cheek. "I'll bring you up some food, you don't have to have dinner with the rest of us."

"Can we not tell Dad and Pim yet...?" Phil asked weakly.

"Whatever you want, sweetheart," Barbara replied, and gave him one last kiss to the cheek. "Get some rest."

She stood up and crossed the room, pausing in the doorway to look back at Phil, who was once more laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling in the dark.

The door slid open and she stepped outside, letting it whoosh closed behind her.

And Barbara leaned back against the door, closing her eyes as it all washed over her, and she choked on a sob, forcing it back so that Phil would not hear. She slid to the floor, her head in her hands, and cried for her family.

For Keely, who'd had to raise a little boy on her own, without Phil there to help her.

For her grandson, who'd never known his father.

And for her son, who she knew she was going to lose forever.

**A/N: Sorry about the long absence, guys. Life has been simply chaotic! This chapter didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but that's okay. There are only two or three chapters left in this short story, so I hope to get them finished and posted soon. Thanks for all your patience!**


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